The Examiners always left the day after a Sounding.
Everyone in Harrowfield knew this the way they knew that the river flooded in spring and the Plough watered its ale. Sister Aldith left before breakfast, usually. The one year a storm had kept her an extra night, she had complained about it so loudly that Goodwife Marsh still did an impression of her at Midwinter.
So when the Grey Watch riders rode out of the square on the second morning after the Sounding, the whole village came to watch them go, and breathed out.
And when the black carriage with the gold circle on its door did not go with them, the whole village breathed back in.
Adrian heard about it from Hollis, who heard about it from his father, who had been delivering flour to the Plough. The High Examiner had paid for the good room for a month. In advance. In gold.
"A month," Hollis said. He was sitting on the Vale fence while Adrian mucked out the goat pen, because the Brandts had finished their chores early and Hollis had decided - apparently on his own - that the two of them were still friends. "Nobody stays in Harrowfield a month. My uncle came to visit for a week once and he left after three days."
"Your uncle drank all your father's beer."
"That's not why he left. He left because it's boring." Hollis kicked his heels against the fence. "So why's a High Examiner staying?"
Adrian kept his eyes on the shovel. "Maybe he likes it here."
"Nobody likes it here. We live here. That's different." Hollis lowered his voice, though there was no one in the yard but the goats. "My da says it's about the Fenwick girl. He says maybe there's something wrong with the land. Something Abyssal. In the water, maybe, or the soil. That's why the harvests are bad. And that's why the mirror went-"
He stopped.
Adrian dug the shovel into the straw and did not look up.
"I didn't mean anything," Hollis said after a moment, awkwardly. "I know the Examiner said it was old. The mirror."
"It was old."
"Right." Hollis kicked the fence again. "Right."
They were quiet. A goat bleated. Adrian carried a shovelful of dirty straw to the midden and came back.
"He also asked for the Brother Odo fellow to stay," Hollis said, more carefully. "And some of the Watch. Four of them. They're sleeping in the chapel loft." He paused. "Your brother's one."
That, Adrian had not known.
He straightened up. Hollis was watching him with an odd, uncomfortable expression, a boy who had never had to think about what his words might do and was just now discovering the problem.
"Rowan asked to stay?" Adrian said.
"Da said the Examiner asked for him. By name."
❖ ❖ ❖
The High Examiner came to the Vale farm on the fifth day.
He came on foot. That was the first thing Adrian noticed. A man with a black carriage and gold in his purse walked all the way up the muddy western lane in his white robes and his blue stole, and by the time he reached the gate the hem of his robe was brown to the shin and he did not seem to mind in the least.
He was carrying a loaf of bread.
Adrian was splitting kindling by the woodpile. He saw the white robe at the end of the lane and his hands went cold on the hatchet, and the grey window opened at the edge of his vision without being asked, and wrote one line:
[Observer approaching.]
Then it closed, and did not open again, no matter how hard Adrian thought at it. It was as though a door had been shut and bolted from the other side.
"Mother," Adrian called, and was proud that his voice came out steady.
Mara came to the doorway, wiping her hands on her apron. She saw the white figure at the gate. For one heartbeat, nothing in her face moved at all.
Then she smiled - an ordinary, slightly flustered farm-wife's smile - and patted at her hair, and said, "Oh, goodness," in a voice Adrian had never heard her use in his life. "Adrian, go and fetch your father from the barn. Quickly now."
He went. When he came back with Tomas, the High Examiner was sitting at their kitchen table.
It looked wrong. Everything about it looked wrong, like a painting of a king that someone had cut out and glued onto a picture of a pigsty. Severin Crane sat on the bench with the short leg, which tilted under him, and he had adjusted himself to its tilt so naturally that he might have been sitting on it for years. The loaf of bread sat on the table in front of him, wrapped in a white cloth. It was wheat bread. Real, white, fine-milled wheat bread, the kind the Vales ate at Midwinter if they ate it at all.
Elsie was sitting across from him with her mouth open.
"-and that," the High Examiner was saying to her, "is why a cat always lands on its feet. It's not a Trait at all. It's simply that cats are very, very vain, and cannot bear to be seen looking foolish."
Elsie laughed out loud, and then clapped both hands over her mouth and looked guiltily at her mother.
"Your Grace," Tomas said from the doorway. His voice was flat.
Crane rose at once, smoothly, and inclined his head. "Goodman Vale. Please - 'Examiner' is quite enough, or 'Brother,' if you prefer. I'm not a duke." He gestured at the bread. "Forgive me for coming unannounced. I've been reading your chapel's records, and I've come to realize that Harrowfield had three failed harvests while the Temple's tithe collectors took their full share each year. I find that shameful." He said it simply, as if he were remarking on the weather. "I've written to the Westmarch chapter house. In the meantime, I've been bringing bread to the families on the western lane. It's a small thing."
"We don't need charity," said Tomas.
"Tomas," Mara murmured.
"It isn't charity, Goodman Vale. It's a debt, and a very partial payment on it." Crane's eyes were mild. "But if it offends you, I'll take it home and eat it myself. I confess I've grown fond of the Plough's bread, which is terrible, and I should probably learn to appreciate better."
There was a moment of silence. Then Elsie said, very small, "I don't mind charity."
Crane's mouth twitched. Tomas looked at his daughter, and at the white bread, and some of the stiffness went out of his shoulders - not all of it - and he came into the kitchen and sat down heavily at the end of the table.
"Thank you, Examiner," Mara said. "You're very kind. Adrian, put the kettle on."
Adrian put the kettle on. He kept his back to the room as much as he could, and he listened.
❖ ❖ ❖
The High Examiner stayed for the length of one pot of mint tea.
He talked about the weather, and the barley blight, and whether the river was higher this year than last. He asked Tomas about the Border War and listened to the short answers with real attention, and he knew the name of Tomas's old regiment, and the name of the battle where Tomas had hurt his knee, and he said something about that battle - something quiet, about the men who had died at the ford - that made Tomas look at him differently.
He talked to Elsie about cats.
He did not talk to Adrian at all.
That was worse than if he had. Adrian stood by the hearth with the kettle, and felt the High Examiner not looking at him the way you could feel a cold draft on the back of your neck. Every so often, Crane's pale eyes would drift across the kitchen - to the herbs drying from the beam, the blue thread that tied them, the shelf with its three precious books - and slide past Adrian without stopping, and move on.
And the grey window stayed shut. Adrian tried, twice, to open it - only to check it was still there - and got nothing. Not even a flicker. Just the ordinary dark behind his eyes and the ordinary kitchen in front of them.
It's hiding, he realized. From him.
"These are Westmarch herbs," Crane said, looking up at the beam. "Except that one. Silverleaf. That grows in the south, doesn't it? Near the capital?"
"A peddler brought seeds," said Mara, pouring tea. "Years ago. It's good for fevers."
"It is. The Temple infirmaries in Solmere use it for exactly that." Crane accepted a cup. "Tied in blue thread, too. That's an old custom. The sisters in the capital used to tie their healing herbs in blue, so they wouldn't be confused with the ones for the kitchen."
"I'm sure I don't know," said Mara. "My mother tied them in blue. It was the thread we had."
Crane sipped his tea. "Of course," he said.
Adrian's hands were very steady on the kettle. He had discovered in the last five days that his hands could be steady even when the inside of him was not.
"Goodwife Vale," Crane said. "I have the oddest feeling we've met."
The kitchen went quiet enough that Adrian heard the goats outside.
His mother laughed. It was a good laugh, a little embarrassed, the laugh of a farm woman flattered to be mistaken for someone interesting. "I don't see how, Examiner. I've never been further than Westmarch market in my life."
"No? Then I'm mistaken." Crane smiled. "It happens more often the older I get. I spent a long time in the capital. Every face begins to look like someone I knew."
"That must be lonely," said Mara.
The High Examiner looked at her over the rim of his cup. For a moment something moved in his face that Adrian didn't understand - not suspicion, not quite. Something closer to sorrow.
"Yes," Crane said. "It is, rather."
❖ ❖ ❖
When the tea was gone, he stood, and thanked them, and brushed at the mud on his robe with no real hope of removing it. Tomas walked him to the door. Adrian thought, with a slow uncoiling of relief, that it was over.
Then, in the doorway, Crane turned.
"Adrian," he said. "Would you walk with me to the end of the lane?"
Tomas moved. It was a small movement - a half-step, bringing his big body between the doorway and the room - but Adrian had seen his father move that way once before, when a stray dog had come into the yard where Elsie was playing.
"The boy has chores," Tomas said.
"Of course. It's only a few hundred yards." Crane's voice was perfectly pleasant. "I promise to return him with all his toes."
Adrian's stomach dropped through the floor.
All his toes. It was a joke. Just a joke. People said it about children and farm blades all the time. It was a thing anyone might say.
But he had said nine and a half to his father in the south meadow, five days ago, with no one else in earshot.
Hadn't he?
He looked at his mother. Mara's face was calm. Her eyes, which only Adrian could see, were saying something very clearly. They were saying: Go. Say nothing. Come back.
"I'll go, Father," Adrian said.
❖ ❖ ❖
The lane was muddy and quiet. The hedges were full of blackberries that were not quite ripe. The High Examiner walked slowly, with his hands clasped behind his back, and for a long time he didn't say anything at all.
Adrian had imagined this conversation every night for five nights. In his imagination, Crane asked him about the mirror, over and over, in different ways, and Adrian said nothing, over and over, in the same way. He had practiced. He was ready.
Crane did not ask about the mirror.
"Your father tells me you noticed something about his knee," the High Examiner said.
Adrian nearly stumbled in a rut.
"He mentioned it at the Plough last night," Crane went on, as if he hadn't noticed. "Not to me. To the miller. He was rather proud, I think. He said his son watched him scything for a morning and told him he'd been putting his weight wrong for twenty years." Crane smiled at the hedgerow. "Is that true?"
"I don't know about twenty years," said Adrian carefully. "His knee hurts. I noticed he leans on it."
"Noticed," Crane repeated. "Just by watching."
"Yes, Examiner."
"That's a rare gift, you know. Noticing. Most people go their whole lives looking at things without seeing them." Crane glanced down at him. "Some of the finest minds in the Temple have Traits for exactly that. [Eagle's Eye]. [Scholar's Focus]. [Truthsight]. They're highly valued."
"I don't have a Trait, Examiner," said Adrian. "I'm Null."
"So you are," said Crane. "So I recorded."
They had reached the end of the lane, where it met the village road beside a crooked old boundary stone. Crane stopped there. Below them, the roofs of Harrowfield sat in the valley, and the chapel's single bell tower rose over them, and Adrian could see - small and white - a squire of the Grey Watch standing at the chapel door.
He was too far away to be sure. But he thought it was Rowan.
"Null children," said Crane, "are sometimes very gifted, in their own way. Without a Trait to lean on, they learn to lean on themselves. I've known Null scholars, Null soldiers. One of the finest surgeons in Solmere is Null. The Temple doesn't always value them as it should." He turned to face Adrian, and his pale eyes were kind. "I would like to help you, Adrian. I think you could be more than a farmhand. I think you could be a great deal more."
"Thank you, Examiner."
"You're wondering what I want in return."
Adrian said nothing, which was, he had come to understand, the safest thing to say.
Crane laughed softly. "Good. That's the right thing to wonder. You should always wonder that, with the Temple. With anyone." He reached into his robe and drew out something small, and held it out on his palm.
It was a sliver of silver. Curved, jagged at one end, polished smooth at the other. It caught the light.
Adrian knew what it was before his mind had finished recognizing it. His body knew. His fingers went cold, and the ache came back into the bones of his hands, the deep aching cold of the Sounding water.
"A piece of your mirror," said Crane. "It broke into three large pieces. And this. I found it on the altar step, where you were standing." He turned it over, thoughtfully. "Do you know, Adrian, silver doesn't fatigue in the way I told the village? Not in two hundred years. Not in two thousand. I lied to them. I lied because they were frightened, and frightened people do terrible things, and I didn't want them to do a terrible thing to you."
He looked up.
"So now you know that I have lied for you once already," said High Examiner Severin Crane. "I want you to remember that. I want you to remember, when you're ready to talk to someone, that I was the one who lied for you." He closed his fingers over the silver sliver, and put it away. "Good day, Adrian. Thank your mother for the tea."
He walked down toward the village.
Adrian stood by the boundary stone until the white robe had disappeared among the roofs. His legs were shaking. He waited for the grey window to open and tell him what to do, what it meant, what he should have said.
It did not open until the High Examiner had been out of sight for a very long time.
When it did, it wrote only four words.
[He is not lying.]
And then, after a pause, two more.
[That is the danger.]